5 Tips For Adding Video To Your Email Marketing Strategy
Posted by Tery Robertson
In today's competitive online world, businesses who use email
marketing are discovering that it's becoming more and more difficult to stand out from the thousands of other websites who are all competing for the same customer dollars. Consumers are inundated with emails (both legitimate and spam) that constantly try to grab them by the throat and scream "buy me!" or "click here!" or "visit my website!".
It is because of this competition that companies who use email marketing, and are striving to be innovative and unique, might consider one of the newest trends in the industry: video marketing.
Done correctly, using video marketing in your email newletters can not only put your company in the foreground of the customer's mind--it can establish the Holy Grail that every marketer strives for: the customer who actually opens your emails.
Here's the important thing about email marketing...it's fairly simple to add people to your email list, however, to get people to actually OPEN your emails is another thing altogether. Marketers spend huge amounts of time and money split testing their subject lines, frequency, copy and other elements, just to raise the click-through rate a few percentage points. So the intelligent marketer who incorporates smart video marketing into their email campaign has the potential of rapidly leaping ahead of the competition. In fact, some marketers have reported up to a 50% increase in click-through rates after they've incorporated an email/video marketing approach.
Using video in your email campaign holds a very strong attraction for consumers. The Online Publishers Association reported that 69% of online users have watched a video and 24% watch one at least once a week. So when savvy online marketers integrate video marketing into their email, it can significantly raise the opening, response and click through rates.
And really, this makes sense. By integrating video marketing into your email programs, you can bring another layer of personalization that plain words on a computer can't reach. And let's admit, people buy from companies that they feel a loyalty toward. Integrating videos into your email campaign can create that warm "fuzzy" feeling.
So just how would you go about creating a video marketing campaign? Here are some ideas that can help you get on track using video in your email.
- Make it entertaining. People use the Internet for a variety of reasons; however, one thing is universal. The more entertained they are, the higher the response rate. This doesn't mean that your videos have to be hilariously funny, but they should keep the viewer's attention. So a well produced video, with good sound and production value is important.
- Make it informative. Never forget that you're a business and those viewers are your customers (or potential customers.) Therefore, don't be afraid to sell your idea, service or product. There's a balance that you'll need to create between hard sell and no sell. If it's appropriate, don't be afraid to use visual aids. PowerPoint presentations work very well as do product demonstrations and testimonials.
- Keep it short. The attention span of an online viewer is short -- probably much shorter than you'd assume. Average videos are about 4 minutes, however studies have shown that most viewers leave before the video ends. And this makes sense, based on television commercials -- which normally are between 15 seconds and 60 seconds, but generally no more than 30 seconds. So when you're creating your video marketing emails, keep your video short -- probably no more than 2 minutes 30 seconds and easily much shorter.
- Immediate call to action. Tell your customers (early and often) what you want them to do. "Click here for more information" or "Visit our website now by clicking the "go there" button" now" will get your viewer moving toward your website. And don't wait until the end of the video to create that call to action either because, as mentioned earlier, many viewers don't watch a video to the end.
- Offer an incentive. You want your viewer to take immediate action and click through to your website, so make it worth their while. Free shipping, a 15% discount, Two for the price of one and other kinds of bonuses work well. Scroll your offer across the bottom of the video while creating that call to action.
By integrating video marketing into your sales campaigns, following the above simple steps and testing...testing...testing, you'll soon see that your click-through rates will rise and traffic to your sites will surge.